Logging Misery And Death Aboard Connecticut Slave Ships

June 11, 2014|By ANNE FARROW, Special to The Courant, The Hartford Courant

Ten years ago, The Hartford Courant embarked on a year-long investigation of a set of 18th-century ship's logbooks that linked ships from New London to the slave trade in West Africa. The project included travel to the West African country of Sierra Leone, where the Connecticut men in the logbooks bought captive Africans to ship as slaves to the West Indies.

As detailed in "Beyond Complicity: The Hidden Story of Connecticut's Slave Ships," a special supplement The Courant published in April 2005, the logbooks made it clear that Connecticut was a direct participant in the slave trade.

In the years since, with help from Douglas C. Conroy, a scholar on the role of New London families in 18th-century trade, further details of the sorry history of Connecticut's role in the slave trade have emerged and sharpened the picture. More men and more ships were involved. It was not uncommon for local men to be killed in pursuit of the trade, and even some of the colony's leading families were part of what was sometimes called the "Guinea trade" in Africa.

The keeper of the logbooks — which are held among the rare documents at the Connecticut State Library in Hartford — was not Sam Gould, the son of an obscure Connecticut farmer, as previously believed, but an aristocrat named Dudley Saltonstall. His involvement, and that of his family, serves to underscore a reality of early Connecticut: Even the "best" families made money from captive labor.

Saltonstall was from the very highest echelon of Colonial life — the direct descendant of Colonial governors in Connecticut and Massachusetts and a descendant of John Winthrop, who energized 17th-century settlers with his famous words, "For we shall be as a city upon a hill — the eyes of all people are upon us."

And although the suffering of captives during the Middle Passage from Africa to the Caribbean has been well documented, the logbooks and continuing research also highlight the lethal nature of the slave trade for the officers and the seamen. Records show that traders from Connecticut died on the African coast of fevers, in uprisings by mutinous crews, or at the hands of black traders. One New London captain had his head bashed in with a musket by his chief mate and an accomplice, and the two men then threw the body overboard, an action to which the chief mate later confessed.

Young Saltonstall, barely 18 at the time he began keeping the logbook on a voyage in January 1757, was the Colonial equivalent of a Kennedy or a Rockefeller. His father, Gurdon, was the deputy, or mayor, of New London and a successful merchant.

Gurdon Saltonstall also owned two of the three ships whose voyages his son documented in the logbooks, and it appears that he put Dudley aboard the Africa — and later aboard the Fox — to serve as the right hand to his commanders, to monitor provisions being distributed to the seamen and to act as his father's eyes and ears on board the vessels.

By April 8, 1757, according to Dudley Saltonstall's log, the Africa was at Sierra Leone and a seaman had been sent to buy rice, which would be fed to slaves. Five days later, Saltonstall recorded that they were "at Bence Island Taking in Slaves Wood & Water." On April 27, Saltonstall wrote, "Now on Board 169 Slaves all in Helth."

But a number of the captive Africans aboard Dudley Saltonstall's ship were infected with amoebic dysentery and quickly fell ill in the first weeks of the voyage. On May 4, Saltonstall first took note of the weather — "Fresh breeses & Hazey" — and then, "1 Man Slave Dangerously ill. at 4 AM a Man Slave Died."

The next day, he again noted the weather — "fresh breses & clear" — and that "This 24 hours Died 3 Small Slaves with the Flux — 165 Slaves Remains Living on Board. Fresh Breses."

And by May 14, nine slaves had died. "We have Now on Board 160 Slaves But Some Very Sick."

More Than 'Dabbled'

Saltonstall's college was the sea, and he enjoyed the kinds of advantages that often follow wealth: At the time of the Revolutionary War he was named one of the first captains in the Continental Navy (brother-in-law Silas Deane of Wethersfield had recommended him).

Although he was later held responsible — and court-martialed — for the loss of 100 ships and a spectacular rout of the Colonials by the British in Maine's Penobscot Bay, Dudley Saltonstall always seemed to land on his feet. But he was disliked by his officers, one of whom was John Paul Jones, and was described as arrogant and snobbish. Jones wrote that Saltonstall treated even his officers as if they were "of a lower species."